I'm trying to pass a string to a Global Function/UDF that I've been working on. The purpose of the UDF is to take a string, delimited by pipes (|), remove any duplicate values from the string, and return a string without any duplicate values back, also delimited by pipes. The problem I have is that the string returned is always <= 255 characters, when in some instances it should be more than 255. I know that strings in the Expression node automatically default to 255 if there is no explicit size given. I assume that the format of setting the size of a string in a UDF would be similar to the format of setting the size in an Expression node, e.g. String (5000) input, but don't know for sure. Is there a way passed this limitation?
You are correct that the in stating that string symbols may be declared with a size. If you assign a value to a string symbol, it is truncated/increated to this size. If you do not specific a size, 255 is used by default.
This is an example from the Expression Reference document for format of setting the string size:
string(20) person
integer x
integer y
integer age
Age=10
if Age < 20 then
person="child"
else
person="adult"
if Age==10
begin
x=50
y=20
end
// nested if/else
I hope this helps.
-shawn
Thank you everyone for your quick responses! I didn't clarify my dilemma enough. I am setting the size of my string variable to greater than 255 i.e. (string (5000) longStr) in the expression node, and I'm passing it as a parameter to my UDF. In the UDF I store the parameter in a string that has a size greater than 255. It eventually gets passed into an output string which I declare as having more than 255 characters. It's just when the UDF returns the value, it always returns only 255 characters. I guess it's more a behavior of the UDF than it is the actual expression node. I wasn't sure if I was doing something wrong. I will try the idea of the EXPRESS_MAX_STRENGTH_LENGTH. Thanks again.
There is also a system macro that you might want to look into. It's called EXPRESS_MAX_STRING_LENGTH. This specifies the maximum length of strings declared in expression nodes. You could trying specifying a value in the .cfg file or in a node at the beginning of your job. It can be up to 5,242,880 bytes, actually.
So, with this new setting, you could declare a very long string in your expression node as follows:
string(65000) myString
string(100000) myLongStr
I think this might help you as well. I use it quite frequently. It's spelled out in the Installation and Configuration guide for the Studio, if you'd like to look into it further.
Tony
The following page in the Data Management Studio installation guide includes a description of the EXPRESS_MAX_STRING_LENGTH option:
DataFlux(R) Data Management Studio 2.6: Installation and Configuration Guide
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